Sir Richard Branson says he will continue his Virgin Galactic space programme
after the fatal Mojave Desert test flight crash and vows to find out what
caused his space tourism company's passenger spaceship to crash during a
test flight in California

In grim remarks at the Mojave Air and Space Port where the craft was under development, Sir Richard gave no details of Friday's accident and deferred to the federal National Transportation Safety Board, whose team had just arrived.

"We are determined to find out what went wrong," he said, asserting that safety has always been the top priority of the programme that envisions taking wealthy tourists to the edge of space for a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth below.

Officials from the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) have started their investigation into what caused the SpaceShipTwo rocket to come down.

It suffered what the firm called a "serious anomaly" after a test flight conducted by Scaled Composites.

SpaceShipTwo has been under development at the spaceport. It was designed to be carried into the air by the WhiteKnightTwo jet and then released before igniting its rocket to travel into space, and then returning to Earth as a glider.

Sir Richard said he was determined to help authorities find out what caused the crash but likened the incident to the early days of flight.

He said: "In the early days of aviation there were incidents and then aviation became very safe.

"In the early days of commercial space travel there have been incidents and then, we hope, that one day the tests pilots will enable people to go into space safely and that is our wish and desire."

Sir Richard added: "We owe it to our test pilots to find out exactly what went wrong and once we have found out what went wrong, if we can overcome it, we will make absolutely certain the dream lives on."